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Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

erikmcclure.com

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Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#271

Post by masklinn »

dillondoyle wrote: post #151
inetknght wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hire quickly and fire quickly This kind of mentality is not conducive to a well-functioning nation with people who have dependents and need stability.

I would reverse it. The nation is not conducive to business if it can't provide healthcare and safety nets for those without work or in between jobs. In the US we are held hostage with healthcare based on our employers - if you're even lucky enough to have a stable job with benefits.

"Hire quickly and fire quickly" has other issues than healthcare and safety nets though, moving across a country and spending weeks trying to find a place to live (possibly losing money on rent because you can't find anything to buy yet) only to have to do it again in a few weeks' time is difficult.

Less of an issue if you're full remote, or you provide good accommodations, I guess.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#272

Post by heartbeats »

omginternets wrote: post #265
heartbeats wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the responsibility of the government to create a well-functioning nation, and to use corporations to this end. But to suggest that people or the corporations have a direct responsibility, is to shift the responsibility away from those who are on 'our side', and to those who are either neutral or its primary victims.

Surely every stakeholder has some degree of responsibility in the proper functioning of any system. By your reasoning, I am free to degrade public infrastructure such as roads because it is not my responsibility to build them. Equivalently: I am morally justified in committing crimes since I am not a police officer.

I have a responsibility not to violate the law or vandalize the roads, but I don't think I have a responsibility to drive extra carefully or patch up potholes as I see them.

To me, this seems like a very cynical scheme. We tell "normal people" that they, personally, ought to BUY AMERICAN to prevent jobs from moving abroad. When they eventually do, we can tell them they should've done more and that it was their fault. It shifts the liability on to the victims, rather than the perpetrators.

But the responsibility of ensuring that a country has a good trade deficit is upon the government, if anyone! There's no serious way I can prevent it, so the only real point of saying it's my responsibility is to diminish the government's responsibility for failing to prevent it.

To suggest that the companies have a moral obligation, is to suggest that an abstract body corporate can have a conscience. If it could, there would be no need to ban slavery - just expect that the honest businessmen of America cease to traffic in them.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#273

Post by mixedCase »

omginternets wrote: post #265
heartbeats wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the responsibility of the government to create a well-functioning nation, and to use corporations to this end. But to suggest that people or the corporations have a direct responsibility, is to shift the responsibility away from those who are on 'our side', and to those who are either neutral or its primary victims.

Surely every stakeholder has some degree of responsibility in the proper functioning of any system. By your reasoning, I am free to degrade public infrastructure such as roads because it is not my responsibility to build them. Equivalently: I am morally justified in committing crimes since I am not a police officer.

>Surely every stakeholder has some degree of responsibility in the proper functioning of any system.

A civilization enforces responsibility through the law.

>I am free to degrade public infrastructure such as roads because it is not my responsibility to build them.

Yes. And either the government should set laws to prevent you from misusing the infrastructure, and/or the people should shun your company for being a bad actor. The former being consistent for infrastructure that is owned and maintained by the tax-funded government.

>I am morally justified in committing crimes since I am not a police officer.

Morality and legality are different things. Neither people nor corporations should be judged by the government through the abstract, subjective morality of individuals, only by agreed upon, written law, and at its loosest which is a court's interpretation of the law.

You as an individual can hold anyone responsible for anything under any criteria, but then you should state you're speaking for yourself as per your own moral code. As a society, we have rules for that.

If you want to make your moral code the law, then that should also be explicitly mentioned as such instead of speaking as if it's the status quo.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#274

Post by liaukovv »

Shish2k wrote: post #185
billfruit wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Throne of lies and social deduction games like them are about finding out peoples real intentions from what they say and do, also aspects like using and understanding subtle signalling to collaborate with ones team.

In my software engineering work I do a lot more “writing documentation to be as clear as possible” than “social deduction and subtle signalling” ^^;;

In fact i would hate to work at a place where you have to do social deduction

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#275

Post by omginternets »

heartbeats wrote: post #272
omginternets wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely every stakeholder has some degree of responsibility in the proper functioning of any system. By your reasoning, I am free to degrade public infrastructure such as roads because it is not my responsibility to build them. Equivalently: I am morally justified in committing crimes since I am not a police officer.

I have a responsibility not to violate the law or vandalize the roads, but I don't think I have a responsibility to drive extra carefully or patch up potholes as I see them. To me, this seems like a very cynical scheme. We tell "normal people" that they, personally, ought to BUY AMERICAN to prevent jobs from moving abroad. When they eventually do, we can tell them they should've done more and that it was their fault.…

>I don't think I have a responsibility to drive extra carefully or patch up potholes as I see them.

We agree. We also agree that businesses do not have the responsibility of fixing society.

However, they do have the responsibility not to degrade it.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#276

Post by omginternets »

mixedCase wrote: post #273
omginternets wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely every stakeholder has some degree of responsibility in the proper functioning of any system. By your reasoning, I am free to degrade public infrastructure such as roads because it is not my responsibility to build them. Equivalently: I am morally justified in committing crimes since I am not a police officer.

>Surely every stakeholder has some degree of responsibility in the proper functioning of any system. A civilization enforces responsibility through the law. >I am free to degrade public infrastructure such as roads because it is not my responsibility to build them. Yes. And either the government should set laws to prevent you from misusing the infrastructure, and/or the people should shun your company for being a bad…

>Yes. And either the government should set laws to prevent you from misusing the infrastructure, and/or the people should shun your company for being a bad actor.

It seems we agree. Similarly, governments should encode the civic responsibility of businesses into law.

Whether or not they have actually done that is a different debate.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#277

Post by jtwaleson »

BurningFrog wrote: post #247
kentonv wrote: post #58

We used this a couple times at Sandstorm back in the day. At the end of the interview the candidate would play Factorio cooperatively with the team for a while. I think it is remarkably effective at identifying the kinds of skills and personality traits that a software engineer actually needs to have in day-to-day work. You can find out if someone is self-directed, how fast they work, whether they produce clean desig…

A reminder that the goal of an interview process is not to be fair. This is not a sports event or a court case. Mostly your goals align with "being fair", but not always, and that's OK.

I agree, so upvoted. The most important question is: "Would I like to work with this person?". That is unfortunately unfair.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#278

Post by inopinatus »

Jesus wept, what a horrifying abomination of an idea. The way I play computer games is so utterly unlike how I write code or design/manage computing systems, I can only surmise this is the product of confirmation bias run amuck, a nightmarish echo chamber of bad ideas reinforcing someone’s ghastly monoculture.

Cramming these tortured metaphors into your hiring process is worse than whiteboard programming, something I didn’t believe possible until reading this steaming pile of numberwang.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#279

Post by SamBam »

iAmAPencilYo wrote: post #248
SamBam wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes me feel lucky to be in my job, and a jolt of gratitude every-so-often is a welcome thing, so thank you. I work with 8 other senior or senior-ish engineers, we are all basically taking a slight paycut (not too much, maybe 80-90% of rates we might get elsewhere) to work for a non-profit making interesting stuff for kids, and everyone is genuinely nice and fairly hard-working. I wonder if the "taking a paycut to d…

Hi, could you share a little of what you do? It didn't even cross my mind I can work for a non-profit, still get paid (not top dollar) and have a good community impact (kids in your case). Thanks!

I work for a grant-funded educational software company that makes science simulations for K through college, but mostly middle school and high school.

Re: Technical interview methods pale in comparison to playing Factorio with someone

#280

Post by Rule35 »

zrail wrote: post #96
kevincox wrote: post #12

I seriously think that "personal projects" are very underrated when it comes to hiring. If I see that someone has a lot of personal projects and has lots of time in Factorio they probably know how to code. I'm not sure you can rank them as Junior/Senior too effectively as these two things don't require much leadership, but you can basically skip the trivial phone interview questions at this point.

Looking at personal projects biases against people who don’t want to or can’t do them, either contractually or due to time/energy constraints.

Not unreasonably. Like it or not, at else being equal someone with more current experience is probably the better employee.

There's this feeling that employers should just take the next person who fits some quota because to pick and choose is to be biased which has somehow become a bad phrase. My employer literally pays me to be biased. My job skills include having appropriate and helpful biases.

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